Will there be fireworks at Tuesday's LHSAA meeting on 'Select' designation?
Tuesday could be a day that alters the course of the Louisiana Athletic Association after as many as 400 high school principals from across the state attend a specially-called meeting of the LHSAA slated for the Marriott Hotel in Baton Rouge.
At stake is the definition of “Select,” per the LHSAA bylaws and how that designation is currently applied to schools from an athletic standpoint. In essence, Select schools are private schools or public schools with an admissions policy that allows students outside a school’s attendance zone to attend that school. A school with a magnet component is currently considered Select.
“The reason for this meeting is that a judge from the 19th Circuit Court in Baton Rouge deemed that the LHSAA violated its own constitution in determining the definition without consulting the principals,” Northwood principal Shannon Wall said. “This is what we were arguing all along. We do not know what will happen on Tuesday, but we are willing to go along with the results of the principal vote.”
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The original LHSAA bylaw, from Jan. 2022 defined a Select school as a “private or public school that has an established academic criteria that is used in order to determine admission and/or retention of its students.”
Last year, however, the executive committee of the LHSAA installed a new definition of Select that was met with anger by a large group of principals when the proposal didn’t come before the entire principal-led organization for consideration.
The LHSAA executive committee voted 16-5 in July to expand the definition of a Select school to the following: “Select shall mean private or public schools that have a state or parish approved definition as a lab school, magnet school(s) with one or more magnet component(s), approved charter schools, parish-wide approved open enrollment, state recovered-district (RSD) application-based parish schools, tuition-based schools and/or any established academic and/or retention-based criterion schools.”
That decision threw all Caddo Parish schools into the Select designation, including Huntington, BTW, Woodlawn, Northwood, Green Oaks and North Caddo, which had previously been Non-Select. Loyola, Byrd, Calvary and Evangel were already Select.
On Tuesday, principals could vote to revert back to the original definition or approve the new one installed by the committee.
“They also changed the playoff structure without consulting the principals, but at this point, that is not on the table,” Wall said. “The LHSAA is a principals organization and should be run by the principals. Those in charge should simply facilitate our decisions. We do expect the constitution guidelines to be followed during Tuesday’s process.”
Expected to attend are all six Bossier Parish principals Whitney Clark (Benton), David Haynie (Haughton), Sandrina Isebaert (Plain Dealing), Justin James (Airline), Michele Tugwell (Bossier) and Steven Vrbka (Parkway), along with all four DeSoto Parish principals in Brian Anderson (Stanley), Chris Bush (Logansport), Tammie Phillips (North DeSoto) and Anesha Ross (Mansfield).
Webster will see principals Denny Finley (Lakeside), Gabe Lyons (North Webster) and Walter Ritchie (Doyline) attend along with Dean Francis representing principal Becky Wilson (Minden).
Confirmed Caddo Parish principals attending will be Crystal Barnes (BTW), Annie Cherry (North Caddo), Kevin Guerrero (Calvary), Betty Jordan (Southwood), John LeBlanc (Loyola), Robert Silvie (Captain Shreve), Nick Smith (Huntington), Shannon Wall (Northwood) and Evangel athletic director Joe Hulett representating principal Stacie Rathbun.
Jimmy Watson covers Louisiana sports for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at jwatson@shreveporttimes.com and follow him on Twitter @JimmyWatson6.
This article originally appeared on Shreveport Times: Here’s why Tuesday’s LHSAA meeting on ‘Select’ could be contentious
